Herself Surprised; To Be a Pilgrim; The Horse's Mouth

About Herself Surprised; To Be a Pilgrim; The Horse’s Mouth

The only one-volume edition of Cary’s classic trilogy, in which three remarkably different characters narrate their interlocking stories across half a century in a gloriously inventive and dazzling triptych

Published in 1941, 1942, and 1944, the novels in Cary’s trilogy were designed to reveal three complex characters not only as they see themselves, but also as they are seen by one another, resulting in a work of three-dimensional depth and force.

From her prison cell, the irrepressible, magnetic Sara Monday looks back on the past half-century of her life in Herself Surprised. Born into a poor family, she takes a job while still a young girl as a cook in a middle-class household, which sets her on a colorful and picaresque path. In To Be a Pilgrim, Tom Wilcher, a wealthy and disgraced lawyer who has been both Sara’s employer and her lover, has retreated to his estate near the end of his life to wrestle with his tormented conscience. And the center of The Horse’s Mouth, a charming, talented, impoverished artist named Gulley Jimson—also a lover of Sara Monday—is a restless, rebellious, and self-serving scoundrel whose antics verge on the appalling and farcical.

Read together, these three vigorous and unforgettable narrative voices offer a sweeping vision of the first half of the twentieth century that is lyrical, profane, tragic, and comic all at once.

Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author’s life and times.